American Dream

In American Dream, Ron Norsworthy reimagines the domestic interiors of the Black middle class in scenes that hover between the achieved and the imagined. Ten collaged reliefs, made from photographs layered up to four inches deep, reveal their own making through exposed plywood edges. Alongside them, three Layer Maps translate this dimensional process into precise, color-blocked works on paper. Within these fractured rooms, walls tilt, mirrors double, and staircases lead to unseen stories. Fragments of art history, film, design, and personal memory coexist on equal ground: Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams from Mahogany, Grant Wood’s Young Corn, Good Times’ Black Jesus, and lilies from Norsworthy’s own garden are all part of the same visual language. The worlds created through these scenes are at once material and metaphorical, intimate and collective, shaped by the shared imagery of American pictures. Norsworthy approaches photography as both a material and cultural language, one that has long shaped how America imagines itself. Since its beginnings, the medium has not only mirrored the American Dream but helped to build it, creating images of prosperity, belonging, and self-invention that continue to define the nation’s image. American Dream foregrounds the photograph’s physical presence, building on those ideals and exposing the structures through which America pictures and forms itself.